The first event that I attended on this summit was the “Governor´s Carbon and Forest Task Force Workshop” where the representation of the countries of Brazil and Indonesia was very strong because they have an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) with the California Government to collaborate on forestry matters for global climate.

During lunch John O´Niles Director of the Tropical Forest Group gave an entertaining and informative session with his vision towards COP15, he basically sees a very complex agreement between too many countries and therefore very hard to be signed on December (“I almost don’t want it to be signed so its not a rushed agreement we end up with”). He did mentioned that REDD is the correct and adequate instrument for the future of forests and their relationship with climate change. He spoke very briefly on the political and technical challenges of the implementation of REDD and the great and generalized enthusiasm that it generates on the international community. He also mentioned that in the Waxman Markey Bill there’s a great deal of resources for REDD. He considered that the standards that will be important are VCS and CCBD since the former resolves the permanence problem of the credits by the “buffering scheme” and the second one incorporates aspects of biodiversity that will be more important as time goes by.

Later the panel was started and the discussion revolved around the REDD scheme and its perspectives; one of the important points of Brazil also backed up by Indonesia was the “stock and flow” approach meaning that a mechanism must be developed to recognize and account the carbon that has already been sequestered by trees, since not doing so we will be rewarding those who hasn’t been conserving and that is a perverse dynamic. There was also talking about baselines, if it is necessary to establish a world baseline or national or regional or sectorial and that all the technical and methodologies issues may be sorted out by Pilot Projects. A very interesting pair ofparticipations were the ones by Almir Narayamoga, our brother from the Indigenous Amazonia that presented overlapping maps showing that the best preserved zones of the rainforest were the zones where indigenous communities were based, and the one from Manoel Silva da Cunha (head of the “Conselho Nacional dos Seringueiros”) that mentioned the great differences between countrymen and city men, mainly the difference on the relationship with the environment, while countrymen live a daily relationship with the environment we the city men pass many hours of each day on buildings that doesn’t even have windows. It is noteworthy that the leader of the organization that was founded by Chico Mendes supports schemes like REDD by saying that it is a mechanism that can benefit the communities and that is viable. The higher the value of this world asset, the bigger the chances are to conserve it. Also CDM was criticized by saying that it leaves out existing forests and therefore Indigenous communities as well. As driving forces for deforestation were identified Cattle raising and Agriculture (industrialized) and as Conservation driving forces Indigenous Communities and biodiversity conservation.

Paty Ruiz Corzo mentioned her experiences also with an emphasis on the deep aspects of conservation and based on her experiences she asserted that 50% of her projects are made possible by donation, if this doesn’t happen it is very hard to conserve, she also spoke about the responsibility of the intermediaries and the necessity to have clear schemes for the distribution of revenues of environmental services projects, making sure that the major part of this income goes to the community. Who will be in charge of this scheme 100 years from now? She asked. As points to keep in mind are the following:

-Clear Methodological Guidelines

-REDD Database

-Carbon Credits rights and property

-Baseline Methodologies

-Insurance Mechanisms

-Assure permanency and stakeholders involvement

-All environmental services must be MRV (Measurable, Reportable and Verifiable)

-Pilot Projects to move forward.

Among others there were some very interesting tables like the one Tony Blair, Arnold Scharzenegger and Rajendra Pachauri headed, the later made a comment that is true but hardly understood by the western world “The most ecological act you can do is become vegetarian” and also mentioned some deep aspects as Gandhi’s Non violence as solutions for crisis like this one. Interesting also was the conference by Thomas Friedman who related some freedom index to oil prices showing a direct and inverse relationship and identifying five problems of the actual world: Supply and demand for energy and Natural resources, Petrodictatorships, Climate Change, Energetic Poverty and Biodiversity Loss.

The rest of the summit was very interesting we are giving forestry an emphasis here so it was noteworthy how this sector has been catching up from being almost denied by CDM now is making big progress and it will be more and more important on the adaptation and mitigation of Global Warming.

THE INTEGRAL ANALISIS

As a human being, a Mexican and a member of a Community Based Organization I feel that we are letting aside the interior aspect of human beings. We tend to focus our discussion on the International Agreements, Science, Systems, Baselines, Inventories and scenarios all of which is good and needed. But I have only heard our Brothers from the Brazilian Amazon (Manoel & Almir) and my colleague from Mexico “Paty” talked about the spiritual aspect of taking care of forests, nature and the planting of trees with a deep intention. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT because our own worldviews and culture lie in this interior aspect and if this is not taken into account, there would be no valid common ground from which a right and collective action for climate can arise. Also on this internal reality is our cognition, namely the capacity to put ourselves on someone else’s place and perspective, and THIS IS A POWERFULL TOOL to understand the driving forces between the stakeholders and avoid future conflicts. The internal aspect CAN BE the key to unlock all the complexities that we face today as human beings.

Consult the actualizations and news that we have done from COP 15 in Copenhaguen 7-18 Dec, following the tendencies on the negatiations and putting special interest on the implications for Forestry. Look for them in Tags as: COP15